Sunday, August 15, 2010

While vacationing with my parents and my wife and kids we decided to go see a movie. Since we had the kiddies in tow, we figured we would go see something "family friendly." The options were, "Despicable Me," they had all seen it, "Flipped," kids would never sit through that, and, "Cats & Dogs." We had a bunch of free movie tickets so thought, "Hey, why not. The first one had some funny moments with the evil Mr. Tinkles."

The first let down came at the ticket window. The film was only showing in 3D. This meant almost a hundred dollars for the group to see the film. Ouch. Seeing there was nothing else and not much else to do, and the children had been promised a movie, we coughed over the dough (paying the difference after using the free tickets that didn't cover the cost of a "3D" ticket).

All I can say is this film was terrible. The 3D was awful. The cg visual effects were terrible, except for some of Kitty Galore, the rest was terrible. The story line was lame. The jokes lacked any punch. Even my kids were getting bored in the film. I was excited to see a cameo from the hilariously funny evil Mr. Tinkles from the first film, but the writing was so awful that I couldn't stand anything that came out of his mouth. Maybe I am crazy for thinking the first one was quirkish and funny. All the characters in this sequel were weak. There was almost no motivation to move any of the story along, at many times the writers didn't even try to string it together and just hoped the audience wouldn't notice the incoherent story. You don't care about any of the characters at all ever during the film.

In conclusion, I wouldn't spend a cent on this movie, not one. Given the chance to go back in time and get our money back I wouldn't hesitate. If you find this movie at all interesting, watch the trailer on iTunes and save yourself the money. It's a complete waste of time.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

The "Sheriff" production is heading into it's sixth year of production/post production. It seems like only yesterday we were shooting on the back lot of the MPS. The main character has gone through some major revisions, always in an effort to increase the quality of the project.

The project has been through many technology changes. For my fellow cg nerds... the project started in Maya 6.5 and has found it's final home in Maya 2010. It began in Renderman 12 and rat tools 6.1 and is now in Mental Ray. It started on Windows Xp and now finds itself living between Mac OS 10.5 and Linux. It has been a real adventure maintaining a pipeline for this endeavor.

There have been many production children from the various artists helping on the movie. The "Sheriff" family continues to grow. I thank everyone for their support. Especially all the wives and children of the crew. Kelly and myself look forward to finishing the project very soon.

This film from students at Gobelins Animation School in France is amazing. Every time I see it I want to go make a short film. It's a great story and technologically brilliant for student work, it holds its ground against many professional shorts with ease. Down right incredible. It was made bake in 2007 and it still impresses. It has garnered many awards and many honorable mentions, including a 2009 nomination for "Best Animated Short" academy award.